A Very Good Thought
by The Hmuff
Summary: When Tintin goes on a trip the week before Christmas, Captain Haddock gets bored. Digging through Tintin's room, he discovers something he hadn't expected.


Disclaimer: I don't own Tintin or Moulinsart; naturally, that all goes to the Hergé Foundation.

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**A Very Good Thought**

When Tintin had said that he would be gone in December to stay with an old friend in Mons, and would be back only in time for Christmas, Haddock really had had no idea how boring it was going to be. Of course, they day he'd left, Haddock told him he would miss him and good luck and not to get himself killed, but had been secretly thinking that it would be a nice change. A nice way to spend the holidays; peace on earth and all that. But with Tintin gone, Calculus at some conference, and Nestor somewhere in Nantouillet— he couldn't remember why— it didn't take long for him to realise he'd been dead wrong. Being by himself was wasn't peaceful. It was terrible.

It was, in fact, the worst holiday ever.

There was simply nothing to do. He'd begun reading a book on naval warfare, but halfway through realised he'd read it before and flung the stupid thing to the floor amid a hailstorm of curses, infuriated at it for wasting his time like that. He sneaked a look at what Cuthbert was getting him for Christmas (an oversized sweater), and took a bath with the door open, and walked around the house singing at the top of his lungs, which was fun, because whenever Tintin or Nestor were home (he didn't care about the professor) he was too self-conscious for that. But even that got old. When he'd drunk two bottles of vodka and passed out on the floor, when he woke up he'd quickly decided it was time to find something more constructive to do.

It was just so boring without Tintin. He almost wanted something bad to happen. Somebody to get shot on his front step. That would be nice. Or a robbery. Or a rabid throng of sun-worshipping Peruvians. Or _something. _Hang it, it was so thundering _boring._

Eventually, the Captain found himself at the doorway to Tintin's bedroom. Tintin hated people going in there; even Haddock, his father in every way except genetics, rarely was allowed in. So he felt like it would be wasting an opportunity, somehow, to not take a peek while he could.

When Tintin had moved into Moulinsart, Haddock had had a paralysing dread that Tintin would turn out to be the type who'd spend an hour dusting the top of his dresser, or would change his sheets every other day, or throw a fit if Haddock left an empty bottle of whisky on the dining room table. But the Captain had actually been in for quite a shock. While Tintin could be incredibly organised when he wanted— or more accurately, needed— to be, he hadn't come from a rich family, even a well-off family, and was apparently never taught the basics of housekeeping, something that even the Captain knew and understood.

For whatever reason, Tintin didn't really care what his room looked like, and furthermore, he wouldn't let Nestor clean it. It was rather childish. Childish seemed like the last word that could ever describe Tintin, but there it was. Papers lay helter-skelter over the floor. The bed was unmade. The dresser drawers, half open, revealed the crumpled balls of half-written articles crammed inside. But the crowning glory was the desk. Crumb-scattered dishes fought for space with balled-up newspapers and draft articles he'd never gotten around to finishing. Tintin had a habit of making cups of tea that sat untouched on his desk for hours, which alone was enough to cause Haddock's brain to hemorrhage. Tintin always told him not to worry about it, and that his desk really was organised, just in a complicated sort of way, but somehow Haddock doubted that. Again, it was rather childish.

Sweeping clusters of pencils and old, ragged portfolios off the desk, he created a pathway toward a small, leather-bound book that sat right next to the typewriter. It looked promising enough. He flipped open to the most recent entry. It was written in French, Tintin's native language, and it took him a while to mentally translate what he was seeing.

_December 17__th_

_Today, Snowy and I are leaving for Mons to meet up with Julien. I'm taking the 8:30 train. I can't wait; it'll be so exciting. _

_Yes!_ He punched the air with his fist triumphantly. _Tintin's journal!_

He began gleefully flipping pages, but it slowly, painfully dawned on him that reading Tintin's journal would seem rather like breaching the trust the lad had placed in him. Elation deflating, he closed the book, quickly, before his brain tried to convince him to go ahead and read anyway. His fingers itched to open it again, but he resisted the temptation.

Becoming increasingly desperate for something at all interesting, Haddock dug around for a while, nearly upsetting more than one cup of tea, before finding an envelope crammed with paper that looked vaguely hopeful. He opened it up, studying a random page, also written in French.

_He could feel the groaning of the freighter as it rocked, back and forth, tossed like driftwood by the waves. His heart was racing, pounding, like a condemned man beating on his cell door. Every movement cut into the ropes holding him to the pipes; sweat that he couldn't wipe away trickled down his face._

_He thought about her. The way her hands gripped his with desperation as she told him, begged him to stay out of it. He had said that he would. Even then, Georges had known that she was aware of his lie. He had been so stupid. He was lost. Alone. Had nothing. Not even her anymore._

_There was nothing left._

_His head whipped up, like a deer hearing the sound of gunfire as, creaking softly, the door to the hold opened. The man that stepped through was unrecognisable, his face obscured by his hat and the upturned collar of his trenchcoat. He didn't say anything. He just raised his submachine gun and pointed it at Georges' face._

_He wanted to say something. But he couldn't speak. His throat was dry, his mind blank. For the first time, the words were gone._

_But it didn't even matter. All of this was because of him._

_There was nothing left._

_The bullets entered his body. He writhed for a moment, throwing his entire body backward in a wild spasm of pain, but then slumped, defeated, against the rope. Gore splattered the ground; he saw it, his own blood, spurting hot and red out of his body with each tortured heartbeat. The voice that wouldn't come before came out in pathetic whimpers, as he watched the man above him drop his gun and pull out a knife._

_"Please…" he gasped, his voice weakened by agony, but the man didn't seem to hear. Through dimming vision, he saw the knife descending, and begged God for the oxygen to be cut off to his brain._

"What in… what the… bloody…" Haddock choked, staring down at the page, his jaw gaping open. He shuddered and tore his gaze away, unable to believe what he had just been reading.

Where in Tintin's mind had this come from?

He literally couldn't _imagine_ this sort of story coming from Tintin. He was too cheerful. Too young. Too innocent. He didn't even like that kind of book. But there it was, on the last page, his name right there. Not even his pen name, his real name, which few people knew. It was definitely by him.

Furrowing his brow, he pulled out another story. It was little better. He started at the last chapter, where somebody who had been searching a jungle for something, was captured by natives, tortured, and eventually sacrificed on their altar. It was well written, that much was true, but just plain _awful._

Haddock didn't really want to see any more, but at the same time, he was fascinated by it. After a moment of indecision, he finally gave in. Tucking the envelope beneath his arm, he re-unorganised the desk, lit a fire in the parlour and curled up on the couch with a cup of Irish coffee, his cat, and a blanket. Snow was drifting out from the darkening clouds, tiny feathers slowly blanketing the cold, brown lawn. A wreath of ivy leaves, merrily dotted with holly berries, hung over his head; at the far end of the room stood the tree, nine feet tall, resplendently decked with silver and gold. It was the sort of night that simply loaded with Christmasy nostalgia. If anybody had been watching, they'd have thought he was pouring over some mushy holiday romance and drinking hot cocoa with peppermint sticks. It was rather odd to be reading what he was, he reflected, in a setting like this. But then he forgot about that and pulled out the story about the jungle again. Written two years ago, he noticed. That was around… probably the trip to Peru.

_Huh. Must've placed it there, with the rainforest scenery fresh in his mind and all._

The grandfather clock boomed out the passing of hours, unheard. His cat left, but he didn't notice her absence. The slightly off-key singing of carollers walking by drifted in and out of his thoughts. He was completely absorbed in Tintin's novellas.

Haddock wasn't the type to be drawn in to a story. He wasn't empathetic like that. All the same, he found himself hoping, even praying, that the hero would pull through. It was odd that he cared so much about the heroes, considering the predictability of the stories. There was a very marked pattern: everybody died. The villains did occasionally receive justice, which was nice. But the heroes always froze to death, or got blown apart by tanks, or fell off of mountaintops, or got shot by gangsters. If anybody else had written it, Haddock would've have laughed in their face and used the morbid junk for toilet paper. But coming from Tintin? It made the whole thing strangely mesmerising.

He was halfway through a book that was a tad more brutal than the others, where the protagonist was crawling through a desert, dying of thirst, when he thought, _Reminds me of when he almost died of thirst, back in Palestine. _Flipping back to the date, it was, indeed, only two months after Palestine. _He's not terribly original in that way._

And then it hit him.

These books were about Tintin.

His mind fought it for a moment, but there was no point. It was incredibly obvious, now that he thought about it. The names and backstories were changed to incorporate fictional childhood traumas that Haddock was fairly certain never really happened. The plots only vaguely resembled things the two of them had gone through. But the bad stuff that happened, in the stories, were, more often than not, things that had happened to Tintin. He could see perfectly what Tintin had been feeling as what happened to him, happened.

A sickening feeling curled in the middle of his gut, clawing at him. He'd heard of something like that; a condition that happened to people after they'd just gone through something really bad. When kids got it, they re-enacted what had happened in everyday play. Tintin was too old for that, but he was still young. He expressed himself in the only way he could: writing.

It was too fantastic to be true. But it made perfect sense.

He sunk into the couch. He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling softly, and noticed, for the first time, that the sky outside was black. How much time had passed since he'd begun reading? Far too much. He painfully stood, picked up the books, and shoved them into the envelope. He wished he'd found these days earlier, years earlier, and at the same time, that he'd never found them at all. At any rate, Tintin never needed to know that he read them. He ought to put them back before he forgot.

The Captain slowly crawled up to Tintin's bedroom and replaced the envelope where he'd found it. When he left the room, he closed the door quietly behind him, and stared vacantly at the wall in front of him for a long time. He felt as if he'd been blind. He'd never even guessed what Tintin was pounding out on those typewriter keys. Made sense, though. Tintin poured whatever unhappiness or anger he felt, into the books, so it didn't have to come out in real life. Through the typewriter, he was able to say everything that he never said out loud.

_But why?_

From somewhere downstairs, he heard the sound of a door slamming, boots stamping snow onto the ground.

"I'm back," Tintin called with his young, boyish, voice, echoing cheerily through the foyer and hallways.

Haddock stood silent for a moment longer, before sighing again and walking down the stairs, his feet slowly, mechanically going down the marble steps.

Tintin stood there, his cheeks flushed with the chill of the bitter December air. Snowflakes lingered in his hair and eyelashes. He looked half-frozen, but exhilarated, nonetheless.

"You're home early."

"Yes, something came up, Julien had to go." He grinned, looking a bit wicked. "I can't say I was sorry, it was frightfully dull."

"Dull?" Haddock asked thickly.

"Yes; of course it was all the same stuff we used to do, you know, movie, pub, that sort of thing," Tintin explained brightly, unravelling his scarf, "but… I don't know. I used to think it was exciting. I don't know," he repeated. "I think your definition of excitement changes after rescuing friends from bloodthirsty totalitarian dictators, or getting shot twenty times, or almost being stranded on the moon with next to no air left." And he actually laughed.

Exciting. The word had been in his journal. In his books, too. And here he was acting like it was a good thing. A _fun _thing.

"Almost dying. Exciting. That's exciting, all right."

Abruptly, he felt a bit guilty for wishing, earlier, that something bad would happen, just to liven things up. He was suddenly somewhat anxious for things to stay peaceful, for once. Maybe adventure was fun, sometimes. But it if it meant even one more page in that envelope…

Tintin looked at Haddock curiously, but just said, "Er… right." His tone was very mild.

They didn't talk much after that; the Captain helped Tintin out of his overcoat, said hello to a frantically yipping Snowy, and the three of them made their way to the parlour.

"Besides, a big storm is coming, and I didn't want to run the risk of missing Christmas with you. Did you make dinner?" Tintin's face was stull rosy from the cold, and his eyes glistened. "I mean, I ate at the pub, so I'm not _hungry _hungry; I couldn't eat a horse, but I could put a pretty fair dent in one."

He shrugged. "I made coffee."

"Sounds great. So, you'd never believe it. While I was at Mons, there was the most terrific news…"

Haddock followed Tintin into the kitchen, only half-listening to his prattle. What was he really thinking of? Feeling? What memories were going through his mind?

He would never know, he realised. The only way he would ever know would be through reading those bloody books. And that wasn't something he'd do anytime soon.

It was sickening, really. After all they'd been through... Tintin was hiding his pain from him. He just wished that Tintin knew that he understood; he knew what the boy was feeling. And Tintin didn't need to hide it. He didn't need to bury it all away in morbid novellas. Haddock wanted, more than anything, to tell him that.

But it would probably never happen; he knew that. Even still, it was a good thought.

For the first time, he realised he actually understood Tintin.

Yes. And he felt himself smiling. It was a very good thought.


End file.
